How to Create and Start your Own Blog that actually makes money – for beginners

Set up your blog on HostGator

Now, once your account is set up, you will have to verify your email. You should receive an email about your account information in order to be able to log in. You will then click on the Control Panel link that has been given to you. The link will direct you to your cPanel.

When you are in the Control Panel on HostGator, scroll down to “Software/Services” and click on “Quick Install.” Where you will install WordPress. It is a free tool!

After you click on Quick Install, on the left side you will find the option “WordPress”. click on it.

Click Continue.

Here you will click on the domain you want to install WordPress on. You will need to enter the admin email, blog address, admin username, first name and last name.

Then click on Install Now. On the next page you will see a message. Make sure to save your username, password and link to the admin panel.

And I’m done. somewhat.

You have now created a WordPress blog on HostGator. You will have to work on the design and produce high quality content, of course. good luck!

If you are looking for a good template for your blog, Genesis always seems to be very popular. Genesis has been used on my blog for a while, and I highly recommend it.

Also, if you are looking for a way to send newsletters to your readers, I would recommend AWeber.

You need to do some of the most important things right after you create your blog.

If you chose a new domain in Step 2 “Type your domain name” above, you will receive a WHOIS verification email. Open your email and click on the “Verify your email” link to activate your domain.

Then login to your WordPress account by clicking on “Login to WordPress” from your Hostgator account.

After logging in you will find the admin panel for WordPress. You will be asked about the nature of the blog (business or personal). Simply click on the “I don’t want help” link.

Then do the other things related to setting up your blog.

This is the first thing to do after starting a blog. When Hostgator installs WordPress on your hosting, it gives you the default username “Admin” which is not good. Spammers and hackers can attack your blog with spam and malware.

You should change it to use strong username and password details.

There is no option to change the username in WordPress. You need to create a new user and delete the default user “Admin”.

Click on “Members” as shown in the image, then “Add New”.

Enter the new user details. Username, email, first name and last name.

Click on “View password” to see your WordPress blog’s password. If you want, you can change it.

Choose the role as “Administrator”.

Find here your WordPress blog account details.

WordPress login URL: https://YourBlog.com/wp-admin (replace YourBlog with your domain name)

You will have to enter your username and password as given in the above steps.

Now you have to register your WordPress account and login again with your new username and password details using the login URL link above.

Navigate back to “Members -> All Members”.

Select the user “Admin” and delete it or change its role to “Subscriber”.

You need to install or change your theme when you start the blog. There are thousands of free and paid templates offered by thousands of web application developers. Theme will change the overall design, style and layout of your blog.

You can click on “Appearance -> Themes -> WordPress.org Templates” to find free templates provided by WordPress.

Do some experiments with the free templates and check which one you like the most. Choose a responsive template that is compatible with the smartphone.

There are hundreds of premium templates outside of WordPress offered by different companies. My favorite template as I mentioned earlier is Genesis provided by StudioPress. Premium templates have more features and are easy to customize.

WordPress plugins are like apps that allow you to add new features and functionality to your WordPress blog. You must install some necessary plugins to create your blog.

Click on “Extensions -> New Added” and search for these extensions to install and activate them.

Here are the best plugins you should have

Yoast SEO: One of the best plugins for on-page SEO and other things like creating a sitemap.

JetPack: HostGator already installs it. Click on JetPack and then click on the Setup button to set up this add-on. It is a multi-purpose addon where you can add things like contact form, share buttons, site stats, and many other things.

Akismet Anti-Spam: This plugin will protect you from spam comments. This add-on is already installed by HostGator. You need to activate it and go to Settings and then click on “Get API Key” to get an API key to use this extension for free.

WP Smush: Images are a great way to improve the quality of your posts, but images take up a lot of storage space and at the same time slow down your blog. This plugin optimizes and compresses your images without reducing their quality. It results in less storage and more speed.

There are other add-ons that you can add such as “Contact Form 7”, Google Analytics, Any Share Button add-on, WordFrence Security etc.

Permalink is a great way to create a clean, custom friendly link. Just click Settings -> Permalink to change your settings. Simply select Custom Structure, enter /%postname%/ in the text box, and click Save Changes.

6. Add the first article

Time to add your first post. You must write a minimum of 1000 words for your blog post on your preferred topic based on your blog remit. Images make your content more attractive so you should consider adding high quality images in your article.

You can find images on sites like Pixabay, Canva to use on your blog.

Click on “Posts -> Add New” to add your first post.

Add your title and content along with the images and click on the “Publish” button to publish the post.

Congratulation! You published your first post after starting your blog.

The reasons for creating a blog vary. Someone might use it as a place to showcase their hobby or as a personal blog. Someone can use it as a business blog. Instead, someone else wants to become a professional blogger like me.

However, making money with a blog is one of the most common goals for starting a blog.

Here are the steps if you want to make money after creating your blog.

You should write on a regular basis after starting your blog. Your posts should be excellent with good research and adding original ideas where people can get something new. People love and share such content.

The more quality content your visitors have, the more traffic you can get.

This is the most important step to get high traffic to your blog. It’s hard to make money without visitors. It takes time to get good traffic on your blog.

There are many things you can do to get traffic to your blog.

Learn SEO and implement on-page and off-page SEO techniques on your blog. In this way, you can get good traffic from Google.

Share your content on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest etc.

Write comments and guest posts on other blogs.

Create videos and upload them to YouTube and other video sharing sites.

This is the ultimate goal of every blogger after starting a blog. There are a number of ways to make money from a blog, but I wouldn’t recommend many of them.

I’ll keep it simple and suggest 2 ways for you as a beginner.

You can make money with Google AdSense and Amazon.

Sign up with AdSense here (try doing this only after you receive some traffic on your blog). Google will display ads on your blog similar to what you see on this blog. When a visitor clicks on any ads, Google pays you.

Another excellent way is to earn money by featuring Amazon products linked to your blog content. Just sign up with the Amazon Associate that matches your country (the service is available in all major countries). Log in to your linked account and get an affiliate link for any product you want to promote through your blog.

When someone goes to Amazon by clicking on your referral link on your blog and buys something, you will get 4% to 12% commission from Amazon.

Do not look for any other methods for now, as you will be confused but you should not focus more on making money instead you should make your blog successful. a